It won't be a coincidence that most of Michael Jackson's closest friends had been child stars, too. One of them, Elizabeth Taylor (pictured), said to Oprah Winfrey when asked about their friendship: "Our childhoods are very similiar, and we had that from the very beginning in common. I was a child star at nine, had an ­abusive father, and that kind of brought us ­together."

He dated Tatum O'Neal, who won an Oscar at the age of 10, and Brooke Shields, who had been a child model and actor, while Liza Minnelli, another close friend, grew up in showbusiness. It was Jackson who introduced Minnelli to her fourth husband, David Gest, another old friend, and he was best man at their wedding. (Elizabeth Taylor completed this curious bunch as maid of honour.) Another bosom buddy was Mark Lester, the British child star of the 1968 musical film Oliver!, who is godfather to Jackson's three children. "We met more than 30 years ago when he was on tour here with the Jackson 5," Lester said in an ­interview last year. "His agent rang and said, 'Michael's favourite film is Oliver!. He'd love to meet you.' We went for a coffee and we've been friends ever since. We have so much in common. We were both thrust into the spotlight at a very early age. If you haven't experienced that, it's impossible to fully understand."

But it was Jackson's friendships with children that would continuously add fuel to the allegations of child abuse that dogged him over the last two decades. In 2005, when Jackson was on trial for abusing a boy – he was first accused of sexually abusing another child he had befriended, Jordan Chandler, in 1993 – Macaulay Culkin, the child star of Home Alone, took the stand to defend his friend, saying they had sometimes shared a bed but Jackson had never molested him and that the claims against him were "ridiculous". They had become friends after Jackson had called Culkin out of the blue and invited him to his house, and Culkin, then 11, appeared in the singer's video for Black or White.

Culkin told Larry King in 2004 that he thought Jackson related to children such as him because they "didn't care who he was. I talked to him like he was a normal human being and kids do that because he's Michael Jackson the pop singer, but he's not the God, the 'King of Pop' or anything like that. He's just a guy who is actually very kid-like himself and wants to go out there and wants to play video games with you."

A succession of child friends, including children battling life-­threatening illnesses, young US soap actors and pop stars, became ­regular visitors to his ranch. In his autobiography, Moon Walk, ­Jackson wrote: "There always seem to be a bunch of kids over at the house, and they're always welcome. They energise me, just being around them."

The picture that has always emerged from the people who knew him is of Jackson as a shy, sensitive gentle soul who found it difficult to make friends. In 1993, he told Winfrey that he found it hard to deal with his popularity and life offstage. "There were times when I had great times with my brothers, pillow fights and things, but I used to always cry from loneliness," he said of his childhood. One of his most ­enduring friendships was with Taylor, who he said was the first person to call him the "King of Pop". They seemed like a mismatched pair, but their friendship endured for more than 20 years.

"He is the least weird man I have ever known," Taylor has said. "He is highly ­intelligent, shrewd, intuitive, understanding, sympathetic, generous." Jackson wasn't said to be particularly close to his family, and the physical and verbal abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his domineering father has been well documented. He remained close to his mother, Katherine, the only member of his family who attended court every day during his trial in 2005, and continually proclaimed his innocence, but was closest to his sister Janet, the youngest, and the only other Jackson child to have a successful solo career.

Jackson's bizarre assortment of friends and acquaintances only added to the weirdness that characterised his life. There were the long friendships with huge stars such as Diana Ross, and people such as Al Sharpton, the preacher and civil rights activist, and Deepak Chopra. There was the marriage to Elvis Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie, and acquaintances with Princess Diana and Madonna.

Then there were the more surprising people in his life such as Uri Geller and their mutual friend Mohamed Al Fayed. Jackson was best man when Geller, who claims to be a psychic and is perhaps most famous for his apparent spoon-bending abilities, renewed his wedding vows in 2001, but reportedly fell out four years later, after Jackson made antisemitic remarks that were aired on a US TV show. "I had my ups and downs with Michael. I think I was one of the very few people who dared to shout at him when I thought he was doing the wrong things," said Geller yesterday. "No one will really know the truth, what was etched and burnt into his psyche in his heart. Nobody really knew Michael Jackson but Michael Jackson."

I liked the ­specific feature of Michael Jackson that all but ­monopolised the tabloid ­attention paid to him throughout his ­career, most of it disobliging in the ­extreme: his face, says Gilbert Adair